5 Ways to Build Effective Influencing Skills

As a leader, you want to be able to motivate and inspire your team towards shared goals. To do this effectively, you need to have influence. Influence is the ability to affect the thoughts, actions, and behaviors of others.  

An influential leader is someone who is adept at sharing not only their vision, but their passion, reason, and determination. It's important to understand that influence, the way that we speak about it, is about collaboration and communication, not manipulation. Having a healthy influence as a leader means your resolve and enthusiasm rub off on others, so that they are inspired to take positive action towards common goals and achieve their full potential. Here are five ways you can develop your influencing skills to become a more successful leader.  

1. Build Trust and Connection 

With trust, you inspire confidence in your role as a leader, and your employees are more willing to fully commit to their tasks. This level of commitment draws out the creativity and capabilities your team needs during challenging times and unpredictable changes. You can create a foundation of trust by showing empathy and understanding, and being your authentic self. Bear in mind, people trust leaders who know when to be tough, too. Sometimes a leader has to ignite a sense of urgency. Different leadership behaviors are appropriate for different circumstances but often run synchronously. This juggling act may combine seemingly contradictory behaviors — generating urgency versus practicing patience, for example — when your team encounters tough transitions, so stay alert. 

Trust is also significant to establish a genuine sense of inclusion. Listen to the perspectives of everyone, including minorities, show equitable support, and be vulnerable with your team. In doing so, you can simultaneously bolster inclusiveness and trust within your organization.  

2. Manage Your Emotional Quotient 

Emotional intelligence, as measured by your emotional quotient (EQ), is another must-have for improving your influencing skills at work. To be aware of your EQ means you recognize your own emotions in real-time, allowing you to influence or change them at will to better suit your environment. By extension, having a strong EQ enables you to better identify emotions in others. When people are around you, what impact do you have on them? With strong emotional intelligence, you can reflect the qualities you want others to feel. Providing positive emotional experiences encourages others to feel the same. And when you consistently reflect certain qualities via your emotions, you persuade others to trust your judgment. For example, friendliness, reliability, and being personable can all create a positive environment where people show respect to your ideas and willingly respond to your directives. 

3. Listen Actively and Be Open 

Leadership and influencing skills go hand-in-hand, so it's no surprise that the core leadership skill of active listening is also essential for influencing others. Active listening is crucial to establish connections with your employees. Remember, influence isn't just about pushing for what you want via control, it's more about building a sense of purpose and optimism around your company's goals. To properly listen, you have to display a great level of openness. At team meetings, encourage idea exchange. You may want to vocalize how much you value everyone's input. Ideally, positive influence should start with you, proliferate among your team, and snowball into increased goal achievements. 

4. Adopt a Servant Leader Philosophy 

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy that prioritizes serving the needs of others first, before the leader's own self-interest. In essence, a servant leader is someone who puts the needs of their team or organization first and foremost, with the aim of empowering and enabling their team to achieve their goals. They view their role as one of service, rather than dominance or control, and seek to create a supportive and collaborative environment in which their team members can thrive. 

Overall, servant leadership is a philosophy that emphasizes collaboration, empowerment, and service. By putting the needs of others first, servant leaders can create a more supportive and inclusive environment in which their team members can thrive, resulting in greater success and impact for the organization as a whole. 

5. Have A Coaching Mindset 

To grow your circle of influence to new heights, consider adopting a coaching mindset. This involves the communication of clear, actionable feedback and reassurance during challenges and setbacks. Coaches further display great confidence, an excellent trait for others to pick up. A coaching mindset motivates others to work towards organizational success. Intentional adoption of a coaching mindset strengthens control of your feelings, thoughts, and actions, making you more effective at influencing others toward positive habits and strategic change. 

Learn Next-Level Coaching with Loeb Leadership Coaching 

Of course, you can upgrade your coaching skills by collaborating with the seasoned team of professionals here at Loeb Leadership. We offer individual or group coaching to enhance the leadership skills of yourself and others. With our help, you can learn to positively influence others for practical use in your day-to-day leadership role and for long-term success. Contact us today.